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Rainbow Girls mark 100 years of service Local organization celebrates century of service with project benefiting HomeFront By JOe EMansKi
Young women looking for ways to volunteer their time for a good cause have a variety of options available to them these days. Among them is the International Order of the Rainbow For Girls, a youth group for girls ages 11-20. The order formed its first assembly in McAlester, Oklahoma, in 1922, and a first New Jersey assembly was held in 1923. This fall, New Jersey assemblies marked a century in existence with luncheons and service projects. Members of Trenton Assembly No. 9, which meets twice monthly in Mercer County, donated 100 purses to HomeFront for its service project. HomeFront pursues its mission of ending homelessness in New Jersey by providing shelter, meals and necessities for families in need. The 22 members collected
100 “gently used” pocketbooks and filled them with toiletries and other essentials for women before donating them to the nonprofit. “The Rainbow Girls are mostly a service organization, so we wanted to do something that was relevant to the community,” said Christine Storie, a Ewing resident who serves as mother advisor for the Trenton Assembly. “The young ladies, in combination with the parents and advisers who help us, collected items all year long to stuff in these bags.” Storie, who is also an account representative for Community News, said the assembly held a luncheon on Sept. 25 that both current members and alumnae of the assembly attended. “We had octogenarians through 10-year-olds all sharing in the tradition,” Storie said. “It’s a sisterhood. It’s a community of ladies who go through the same set of traditions throughout the years.” Girls ages 5 through 10 are eligible to become Rainbow Girl pledges, while girls ages 10-20 are eligible to become Rainbow Girls. After the age of 20, many Rainbow Girls remain involved with their assemblies as advisers to the group. See RAiNBOW, Page 20
Greenwood Elementary School students in the cafeteria where the Ruby Bridges mural has been installed. Principal Nicole Dickens-Simon is at the far left. (Photo courtesy of Aysha Ahmad.)
New mural sparks inspiration for Greenwood Elementary students By JOe EMansKi
The Greenwood Elementary School principal, Dr. Nicole Dickens-Simon, says she has always wanted to have images that represent the school’s students on display throughout the school building. Many of Greenwood’s students are people of color. “Be it artwork that the students have created, artwork that teachers or staff have created — morale boosting,
energetic images, so our students are inundated with reminders of our core values and our school rules to be kind and respectful,” Simon says. Last year, district art supervisor Danielle Tan and Greenwood climate and culture specialist Aysha Ahmad informed Simon that Greenwood had been awarded a grant for the creation of artwork on campus. Simon knew that she wanted to use the grant to create a mural that was meaningful to
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the students. “Something that they would understand, that would resonate with them,” she says. John Malloy, a fourth grade social studies teacher at Greenwood, was the first to suggest Ruby Bridges as the subject of a mural. Bridges, now 69, is known as the first AfricanAmerican student to attend the formerly Whites-only William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in 1960. See MURAL, Page 18
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